Until Dawn: A Walk Among The Shadows
by The Ascendant
Summary: A survivor determined to end the curse that took the lives of her friends. A daughter searching for her missing parent. A father desperate to find his lost son. All their paths lead to Blackwood Mountain, and all their hopes may rest with a mysterious drifter familiar with the supernatural. But with the failures of the Wendigo, has the curse summoned an even deadlier threat?


**They come in the moonlight, so dark, so cold.**

 **They don't want riches, they have no home.**

 **If you should see them, you need not run.**

 **There is no escape when the Wendigo come.**

It was as quiet and cold of a night as any had seen on Blackwood Mountain. The moon hung in glowing silence among the black overcast of gleaming stars, guiding faint light over a remote peak of mountain woods. The wind howled with a meager strength, jutting the limbs of the towering trees as a current coursed the ground, cascading sprays of coalescing snow down the rocky terrain of sloping hillsides. The temperature bit with a stifling chill, so bitter that the flush of blood to cheek was almost instant. Yes, this was as quiet and cold of a night as any had seen on Blackwood Mountain, but it was not to remain so. A rev of noise slit the evening bliss, as the brightened beams of headlights erupted under the roar of a powerful engine.

Aldon Briar, a local photographer for the Blackwood Dispatch stomped at the flatness of his truck's gas pedal with a heavy boot, jamming it back into the base of the floor space. His eyes stung wild with gruesome fear, as the adrenaline surging through his system brought his pupils into full dilation. Back and forth his peer darted nervously to the rear-view mirror and the empty span of darkened icy road it relayed, paying more thought there than what was ahead of him. A laceration, fresh and deep, bled down from his teetering forehead to wet his temple a murky red. Aldon reached up once out of reflex to check the wound, before returning his hand to grip at the steering wheel harder, trying desperately to delay the thickening veil of nausea slipping over his mind.

He had to get back to the cabin, he told himself. He has to warn others. The truck cut hard into a sharp turn, kicking up motes of slush with a sliding skid of the tires. There, just beyond the shady shroud of the trees and rich blanket of diamonds, a log cabin awaited. Aldon throttled ahead up the snowy path, slamming on the brakes almost too late. The truck stiffened, jostling rapidly while the wheels ripped the ground asunder with their momentum, until finally halting. The vehicle door swung open with a rusty moan, unable to help catch Aldon as he tumped through it and struck the outside.

A guttural hack escaped his lungs, laced with traces of blood and saliva that sank a red blotch through a nearby patch of moist white. Five separate gashes shone behind the tattered remains of his flannel shirt, long and deep by design, and bleeding a profuse smear down the length of his blue jeans. Placing his palm upon the rough mixture of ivory-coated dirt, he balled a fist and pushed off, rolling to his stomach where his pain only served to intensify. A hard breeze flew from the wayside hill, shuffling bush and branch, and sending the hairs of Aldon's neck daggering. With a weary jolt, he returned his head to the forest road, eyes locked wide, breath heaving into hyperventilation. Swirls of glistening moisture gathered and dispersed, building in ferocity. The towering, wooden giants joined them, lumbering back and forth. The air then took on a stale odor, repelling Aldon's nostrils as the breeze grew to a treacherous gale. It was coming...

Aldon grunted, his wounds burning even within the frozen air, but somehow he forced himself to stand. Wobbly legs carried him onto the old porch, where his body collapsed into the door from fatigue. He reached for the knob without hesitation, fighting off his fingers' sudden urge to shudder, and turned it open. Inside, the cabin was for all intents and purposes, a portrait of pioneer life. Simple in its decoration of plain rugs, a few hanging deer heads along with other stuffed animals, but that was where the simplicity stopped. A dozen, melted candles lit the room with a soft orange shine, most of which stationed at a lone coffee table overtaken by various books and texts. Maps of the local area hung tacked to the walls, specific locations of interest circled or marked out.

Aldon hurried inside, one hand cradling his bleeding stomach, and the other wrestling against the strong wind to lock the door. The glass in the windows now took to vibration, as the hanging ceramics mugs and plates rattled from within the kitchen. Soon, the entire confines of the cabin seemed to quake. Burying a crimson-stained hand into his coat pocket, Aldon recovered his cell phone and anxiously headed for the coffee table. He searched the list of numerous contacts, pressing the directional key further down as fast as his thumb could muster, until pausing on a name he hadn't seen or spoken in some time.

Eden.

Aldon hit SEND.

The ringing seemed to tread infinitely until a voicemail of a young woman clicked on asking the caller to leave a message. Immediately, the turbulent surroundings of the cabin blustered through the speaker, so much that Aldon's voice could just barely be heard on the other end. "Eden, baby! I'm sorry!" Aldon's terrified voice reeked of desperation, fear and a lack of time motivating his every crucial word. "It's coming for me now! We tried to stop the curse, but only made things worse, now it wants the town, Eden! It wants the entire town! Don't come looking for me, and don't let anyone else come up the mountain! Promise me. Promise me you'll do this!"

The cabin now convulsed without restraint. The deer heads shed from their perched positions. Cabinet doors swung clear and rattled loose their contents onto the shivering wooden floors. Though, through all the clamoring of gusting wind and shattering items, one sound, and one sound, alone, stood out over the rest. It wasn't boisterous, it was subdued. It wasn't powerful, it was strangely gentle. A humming. No, a fluttering.

Aldon froze, his heart pumping with the rhythm of pounding drums. His ears no longer acknowledged the noise, as his head drew slowly to the closest window, and there his stare gaped. Blackened butterflies, a swarm of immensity gathered and blotted out the glass from the outside, their thousands of tiny bodies climbing over and around each other like an army of ants. What little time he had left had expired. It had arrived. A thud struck the door, hard and heavy enough to let more wind billow in from the top of the frame. Before Aldon could even address the first one, another struck, and another, continuously drawing back and striking until the door began to chip and splinter. Aldon stared on in awed silence as more and more of the cabin was destroyed around him, and a new sense of hopelessness settled in. He looked to the phone in his hand, acknowledging that the message was still being recorded. His instincts blared for him to run, to try and find a way out, but he somehow knew escape was never an option after what he witnessed, only this last gifted warning. The evil of Blackwood Mountain would have him, there was no point in denying it further. Bringing the phone back to his ear, Aldon eased his nerves the best he could and spoke softly for the final time. "Goodbye, bumblebee." His fingers then loosened, allowing the phone to drift from his grasp and plunge to the carpet below.

The cabin door exploded with a bludgeoning peal, expelling shredded wooden shards that sent Aldon stumbling down into the grate of the unused fireplace. The swarm of black butterflies swooped inside in a dark, living wave of motion that extinguished the candle flames. They sought upon the human man like flies to a corpse, covering his every inch in an insectual coat. Aldon took to screaming and clawing to remove the creatures, but his effort was wasted. Blood seeped from his once brown skin from thousands of little bites that were chewed away from him, devoured along with his hair and nails, until he was stripped of his flesh. Without warning, Aldon was then torn from the cabin by a unseen force, ripping him across the glistening flakes of powder where he was pulled deep into the gloom of the woods. His distant, echoing cries the last thing heard on the other end of the phone line.


End file.
